Still the Leader

Able to accomplish more in his seven decades than most of us can barely envision, Roger Penske is one of the most successful gladiators ever to do battle in the automotive arena.

He achieved initial success as a racecar driver in the early 1960s, followed by even greater glory as a racing team owner. He parlayed a single new-car dealership into a diverse business empire that includes the ubiquitous truck-rental firm bearing his name and one of the largest auto-retailing empires in the world. Enshrined in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he sits on corporate boards and currently resides at number 140 on the Forbes list of America’s richest people.

While Penske has few equals in the world of wheels, he remains refreshingly soft-spoken and true to his humble origins. As with most self-made people, his empire started out rather modestly.

His first professional experience with cars came during his senior year of high school in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

“I had been in a motorcycle accident the previous year and couldn’t play football, so I went to work for the local Jaguar dealer washing cars,” he says.

He started his first independent auto-related business in the late 1950s while studying business administration at Lehigh University.

“I had a garage off campus in which I would buy cars, fix them up, and sell them,” he recalls. “By then, the car business was in my blood.”

A year before earning his degree, having already cultivated a taste for speed, Penske launched his racing career in 1958 at the age of 21 in SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) modified events. He took home his first winner’s trophy the following year at the SCCA Regional in Lime Rock, Connecticut, driving an F-Modified Porsche RS.

Upon graduating from college, Penske sold aluminum for Alcoa while honing his racing skills. In 1961, he won the SCCA national title and was named SCCA Driver of the Year by Sports Illustrated; the following year he was awarded Driver of the Year honors by the New York Times.

Penske went on to win the USAC road racing championship, and finished first in the Riverside, Monterey and Puerto Rico Grand Prix events aboard the famed Zerex Special, a Formula One car that had been modified as a two-seat racer. In 1963, he moved over to the NASCAR circuit and took the checkered flag at both the Riverside 250 and Yankee 300.

After a highly successful but relatively short seven-year career as a professional driver, Penske shocked the motorsports world by stepping away from the wheel in 1964 to concentrate his efforts on business. Penske left Alcoa to become general manager of McKean Chevrolet in Philadelphia. Selling cars wasn’t enough to quench his thirst for competition, however. In 1966, Penske established his own Can-Am team, Penske Racing, with his engineer-driver, the late Mark Donohue, who piloted a Lola to first place at Mosport Park.

“I did the right thing [starting my own racing team] because I’ve been able to hire people that were better drivers than me,” Penske admits.

Subsequently branching out to field teams in the IndyCar and NASCAR circuits and, briefly during the mid-1970’s, Formula One, Penske Racing eventually became a sports dynasty in its own right. It is to motorsports what the New York Yankees are to baseball: Over the past four decades Penske Racing cars have racked up (as of this writing) 280 major race wins, 325 pole positions and twenty national championships, including fourteen first-place finishes at the Indianapolis 500. His prestigious stable of drivers has included such hall-of-fame names as Mario Andretti, Rick Mears, Emerson Fittipaldi, Danny Sullivan and all three generations of Unsers: Bobby, Al and Al Jr. All the while, Penske has kept up with changing tastes and times to remain at the top of his game.

“In the early days racing was pretty much who was the bravest guy and who had the biggest motor,” Penske recalls. “Today it’s an integration of technology, aerodynamics and the driver’s talents.”

Penske currently maintains both IndyCar and NASCAR teams, piloted by Helio Castroneves, Sam Hornish, Jr., Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman. In 2005, Penske Racing returned to Le Mans, partnering with Porsche to establish what has become a successful two-car team in the American LeMans series.

Penske Racing’s 105-acre facility in Mooresville, N.C. looks more the part of a corporate campus than a garage, and is its own tourist attraction. Included is a gift shop and a 330-foot “fan walk,” where visitors can observe the various teams preparing their cars for competition.

Meanwhile, with the help of connections he forged on the racing side of the business, Penske became owner of McKean Chevrolet in 1965 after the former owner retired. It became the seed from which a vast business empire would grow. Founded in 1990 and taken public in 1996, Penske’s Detroit-based United Auto Group (UAG) is now the second largest auto dealer in the United States. UAG owns 310 auto-retailing franchises worldwide; 165 of them are in the U.S. and they represent forty-one separate vehicle lines, with a payroll of nearly 16,000 employees.

Penske also owns several California dealerships exclusive of UAG, and he turned heads on Wall Street by purchasing and turning around moribund businesses like Hertz Truck Leasing and General Motors’ Detroit Diesel Corp. His vast holdings also include ownership interests in racetracks, as well as logistics management and vehicle component companies, among other ventures.

Penske is particularly proud of UAG’s “flagship” mega-dealerships that stand apart as truly unique auto-retailing facilities. “We’re more of a destination-type retailer in that regard,” he explains. For example, the company’s most-prominent facility, the Scottsdale 101 Auto Collection in Scottsdale, Arizona, is home to eleven separate new car franchises and the Penske Racing Museum.

“We get thousands of visitors on an annual basis there,” Penske beams. The recently upgraded Turnersville Automall, located twenty minutes from Penske’s original Chevy franchise in Philadelphia, includes its own three-quarter-mile test track.

Penske partnered with casino mogul Steve Wynn in 2005 to open the inimitable Penske Wynn Ferrari Maserati dealership. Located near the main entrance to the Wynn Las Vegas resort in the heart of Sin City’s famed “strip,” it incorporates a new-car showroom where the least expensive model still runs into six figures, and a pre-owned-vehicle display floor that doubles as an exotic-auto museum. (The complex also includes a restaurant, service department and Ferrari-themed gift shop). In a nod to Ferrari/Maserati’s rich heritage, a number of vintage road and racecars are also on display, often from Penske’s own extensive collection of “toys,” as he calls them. Each week, the complex draws several thousands of visitors, as well as a few well-heeled buyers.

“There isn’t a showroom anywhere that has this kind of traffic on a daily basis,” Penske boasts. “There’s no dealership I know of in the country that’s like it ’Äì it’s amazing.”

At an age when many would be content to slow down and live the good life, Penske remains as active as ever. Always the dapper dresser, he continues running and expanding his various empires at a pace that puts much younger individuals to shame. Last year he hosted the sports world in his own backyard as Chairman of the Detroit Super Bowl XL Host Committee, showing off his adopted hometown with his usual unflappable commitment to success.

Penske’s latest automotive venture will bring a brand-new car brand to America beginning next year, called Smart. To be sold through a yet-to-be established network of fifty to seventy UAG dealerships in the U.S., the diminutive and distinctly styled Smart Fortwo is nearly small enough to fit in the cargo bed of a full-size pickup truck. The vehicle holds, as the name implies, two passengers; its 1.0-liter engine is said to get as much as sixty miles per gallon. Built by Daimler-Chrysler and sold in thirty-six countries where high fuel prices and narrow streets make mini-cars a necessity, critics are skeptical at how successful the $12,000-$17,000 sub-subcompact will be among SUV-loving Americans.

Penske, however remains typically optimistic and enthusiastic about the brand’s possibilities. “We are encouraged by the overwhelming, positive response to Smart,” Penske says. “We are excited to bring the Smart vehicle to the United States, and we look forward to seeing thousands of these unique, urban-friendly vehicles crisscrossing the country.”

Currently residing in Birmingham, Michigan with his second wife, Kathy, Penske has fathered five children, two of whom are actively involved in his business ventures.

While he’s undeniably one of the most successful businesspeople in the country, Penske still manages his affairs as if the checkered flag was but a lap away.

“We’ve used racing as a common thread through our businesses, because it demonstrates performance and teamwork, and shows your technical capabilities ’Äì it gives you a ’make it happen’ attitude,” Penske explains. “There’s people in the racing business and there’s racers, and there’s a big difference between them. We’re racers because we do whatever it takes to succeed.”